​​PICK YOUR POISON

WHAT IS THIS GAME!?!?!?

The Nutshack: The Game is a game based on one of the worst animated cartoons aired on TV. Is it that bad? Not to the developer. The developer, Chair, actually enjoys the show focused for Filipinos, and the developer is a Filipino. The Nutshack is co-created by the Jesse Hernandez and Ramon Lopez. The show has aired on Myx TV with two seasons, both with the same theme song sung by NUMP Trump. In fact, it was the theme song that popularized the show in 2016, even though the show was aired almost a decade ago. It truly became a strange meme that spawned so many videos of simply changing the "NUTSHACK" portion of the song into something different.

This game features two playable characters: Phil Matibag and Tito Dick. Join them in this retro style platforming journey to solve the mystery of their missing Nutshack crew.

Basic Controls

Moving and Jumping

In order to move, use the arrow keys/D-pad/Analog stick. Jumping is an essential mechanic and can be performed by pressing Z on the keyboard or A on the gamepad. You are allowed to double jump to reach further distances. Remember that as soon as you let go of the button, your upwards momentum will stop.

Dashing and Dash Jumping

Dashing is an ESSENTIAL part of the gameplay. About 90% of the time, you should be dashing. More importantly, majority of your jumps should be dash jumps. In order to dash, you press C on your keyboard or B on your gamepad. A dash jump can be performed by pressing the jump button during a dash, but an easier and more efficient way to perform this is by pressing the dash and jump button at the same time. Dash jumping not only allows you to make longer jumps but it also makes your jump's height even higher. Take note that once you make the second jump, you dash will disappear.

Attacking with Phil

Phil still got the gun he stole from Bob Saget, but it's now even better. Instead of bullets, it can now shoot his cummies, just like in TT Boy and Kid Utot. Phil can shoot as fast as your fingers allow. In addition to that he shoot while moving and shoot upwards. If you need to take something down from a distance or just stay defensive, Phil's shots are your choice. You can attack by pressing Z on your keyboard or by pressing X on your gamepad. In order to shoot upwards, you have to hold up while attacking.

Phil's Weed Shine

Smoke your problems away with Phil's Weed Shine. You can perform this by holding down while attacking. Phil will create a weed shaped barrier, which will reflect any incoming projectile. But be careful, as this will leave you vulnerable to physical attacks.

Attacking with Tito Dick

Though Tito Dick lacks the range that Phil's gun has, his sword truly has a greater damage output. In addition to that, his attacks have a wider hitbox, making you very powerful at close range. While playing Phil encourages defensive play, playing Tito Dick encourages all out offensive play. Press Z or X to swing Dick's sword. You can also aim your sword upwards by holding up during attacking. Doing an aerial slash covers 90 degrees in front of Tito Dick.

Charging Tito Dick's Sword

In order to make up Tito Dick's close range, he can charge his sword to unleash a powerful long slash. To perform this, you must hold the attack button, and release it when Dick glows yellow. Another advantage to this is that this slash goes through walls, meaning that you can defeat opponents that cannot even reach you at all.

Tito Dick's Spot Dodge

Sometimes getting close could be tough with the range of the opponent's attacks. When there is no other choice, you can spot dodge to become invincible for a second. But watch out! Any longer than that will leave you vulnerable to any attack! You can immediately attack or dash during a spot dodge, so use that opportunity to make a counter strike! To spot dodge, press the attack button while holding down. This only works while you are on the ground.

Tito Dick's Samurai Drop

You can immediately ground yourself by pressing attack while holding down in the air. With this, you can either quickly escape bullets coming at you in the air or you can make a powerful strike at an enemy below you. At certain occassions, especially on bigger enemies, you can bounce on them. This can be helpful to continue your long jumps.

Advanced Techniques

Dashing Shine Cancel and Multi Shining

You can cancel your shine just by dashing during the shine. The benefits to this and all of the other shine cancels is that you are able to move again and that the shine effect will follow your movement. You can repeatedly do this to perform a multi shine especially when you are unsure when the projectile will get to you.

Shine Cancel Melee

Perhaps the easiest way to cancel a shine is to jump during the shine. Like any other shine, this carries the shine effect as you move. You can also combine this with the dashing shine cancel to dash jump while having the shine effect. This is the fastest way to break crates.

Shine Cancel 64

The hardest shine cancel can be performed by doing a shine just as you land. The shine animation gets cancelled right away when Phil touches the ground.

Shine Stalling

Shine Stalling basically extends your air time. By shining in the air, your verical momentum gets reset. If you ever mess up during NUMP Trump's disappearing blocks, spam the shine on the air until the blocks become active again. This is also used to perform an important speedrunning skip in stage 2.

Speedrunning

Lame Dimension fully supports speedrunning of this game, as it helps us see the flaws and exploitations that can be done in the game. But this is not so that we can make a game strict in mechanics, it's so that we can retain what is great about a game and how we can turn these exploitations into better experience in the future. If you are interested in speedrunning this game, the leaderboards can be found here. If you are new to speedrunning this game, here's a few skips that you might want to learn.

All Switches Skip

This is an essential skip in speedrunning, as it allows you to through the entire second stage without solving any of the switch puzzles. Many areas requiring you to switch the buttons on can be skipped by doing a dash jumps and possibly doing a few shine stalls.

Dickman Skip

This skip can only be performed if Tito Dick is not near death during the third section of Stage 3. By taking damage from the robot near the purple switch, Tito Dick can perform a third jump, as taking damage will reset the jump counter. Tito Dick can then land on the purple switch and jump to the next section, skipping a NUMP puzzle. Prior to this, the yellow switch at the beginning part can be deactivated with a charged sword slash. This disables the yellow blocks on the top to allow passage. The purple switch must also be activated, as NUMP will deactivate them as you approach the purple blocks blocking your way. There's another part to this skip, which will require breaking the top part of the crates to be able to jump over the next set of walls.

Switch in Crates Skip

A simple skip. Simply charge Tito Dick's Sword to activate the switch at the begnning of stage 4 instead of going through the trouble of going up there.

The Purple Switch Skip

To do this, you must align yourself to the peak of smol Nozomi's head. Once you are there, down air and you will get the bounce. The bounce will fail if you're not close enough, as Nozomi is too small to bounce on. If you fail, you can wait for Willie to throw a beer bottle. Take damage from it to obtain a third jump to get the skip. This is important as it also saves you from disabling the purple switch later.

Pointless Development Facts

Developer's Voice

"After so many attempts throughout the years of making platformers, I think I finally made a somewhat decent one for a meme game. I love the feedback of the community as it helped solved small problems that had a big impact in the gameplay of the game. What made me happy the most is that this is the first game where people actually uploaded playthroughs and speedruns on Youtube. I check Youtube everyday for any new upload just to thank them."​ -Chair 2016

The game is based off the Megaman series. Phil essentially plays like Bass from Megaman & Bass, and Tito Dick plays like Zero from the Megaman Zero series.

This game was intended to be a 24 hour development project for Extra Life. Chair only finished the bosses at the end of the stream marathon and decided to extend the development to weeks in order to have time to create stages.

The Nutshack was not the original idea for the 24 hour Extra Life stream. The game supposed to be developed at first was supposed to be a clone of Toy Pop featuring the Chair's Twitch Bot, Aya.

The game was created initially to say Thank You for the one thousand subscribers in a few weeks. Near the end of the development, the game was released as a way to regain and save the views, as Youtube's algorithm killed the uprising of Chair's increasing subscribers and views.

Final Flames 2 was supposed to be the top priority for the games to be completed. The Nutshack became top priority because the meme was already dying down at this point.

Majority of the techs are a reference to the competitive Smash Bros series.

Comments

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